@techreport{MahlkowWanner2023,
  type      = {Working Paper},
  author    = {Mahlkow, Hendrik and Wanner, Joschka},
  title     = {The Carbon Footprint of Global Trade Imbalances},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-33041},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-330410},
  pages     = {53},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {International trade is highly imbalanced both in terms of values and in terms of embodied carbon emissions. We show that the persistent current value trade imbalance patterns contribute to a higher level of global emissions compared to a world of balanced international trade. Specifically, we build a Ricardian quantitative trade model including sectoral input-output linkages, trade imbalances, fossil fuel extraction, and carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion and use this framework to simulate counterfactual changes to countries' trade balances. For individual countries, the emission effects of removing their trade imbalances depend on the carbon intensities of their production and consumption patterns, as well as on their fossil resource abundance. Eliminating the Russian trade surplus and the US trade deficit would lead to the largest environmental benefits in terms of lower global emissions. Globally, the simultaneous removal of all trade imbalances would lower world carbon emissions by 0.9 percent or 295 million tons of carbon dioxide.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{DonadoGomez2011,
  author    = {Donado Gomez, Alejandro},
  title     = {Trade Unions and Occupational Health and Safety},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-56076},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {This thesis comprises three essays that study the impact of trade unions on occupational health and safety (OHS). The first essay proposes a theoretical model that highlights the crucial role that unions have played throughout history in making workplaces safer. Firms traditionally oppose better health standards. Workplace safety is costly for firms but increases the average health of workers and thereby the aggregate labour supply. A laissez-faire approach in which firms set safety standards is suboptimal as workers are not fully informed of health risks associated with their jobs. Safety standards set by better-informed trade unions are output and welfare increasing. The second essay extends the model to a two-country world consisting of the capital-rich "North" and the capital-poor "South". The North has trade unions that set high OHS standards. There are no unions in the South and OHS standards are low. Trade between these two countries can imply a reduction in safety standards in the North, lowering the positive welfare effects of trade. Moreover, when trade unions are also established in the South, northern OHS standards might be further reduced. The third essay studies the impact of unions on OHS from an empirical perspective. It focuses on one component of OHS: occupational injuries. A literature summary including 25 empirical studies shows that most studies associate unions with less fatal occupational injuries. This is in perfect line with the anecdotal evidence and the basic model from the first essay. However, the literature summary also shows that most empirical studies associate unions with more nonfatal occupational injuries. This puzzling result has been explained in the literature by (1) lower underreporting in unionized workplaces, (2) unions being more able to organize hazardous workplaces, and (3) unionized workers preferring higher wages at the expense of better working conditions. Using individual-level panel data, this essay presents evidence against all these three explanations. However, it cannot reject the hypothesis that workers reduce their precautionary behaviour when they join a trade union. Hence, the puzzle seems to be due to a strong moral hazard effect. These empirical results suggest that the basic model from the first essay needs to be extended to account for this moral hazard effect.},
  subject      = {Arbeitsschutz},
  language  = {en}
}